If you’ve read John Waters’ magnificent book Role Models, then you’ll know that the movie-maker is big into his fashion, writing a whole chapter in praise of Rei Kawakubo and Comme des Garçons. In an interview with GQ yesterday, Waters laid down a few of his fashion rules, and Vogue’s Anna Wintour got a serious dressing down: “I’m very right wing on the oldest of all: never wearing white in the summer. Even Anna Wintour wears it now. I think velvet before Thanksgiving is wrong. Patent leather before Easter is wrong. All those old rules, I believe in. I think some things like tube tops can never be okay. Maxi skirts are the ultimate violation. That’s the only dress rule I have in my office. You’re fired if you wear a maxi skirt.”
The interview contained some other superb style snippets. Here are our favorite five below:
1. “I shop for fashion like I shop in a joke shop.”
2. “I think all of Walter Van Beirendonck’s stuff is really great lately.”
3. “Nobody ever gets held up for Comme des Garçons outfits. Although that would be a very fashionable burglar”
4. “I think the first person that did a good radical suit was Basquiat when he was on the cover of the New York Times magazine section in a Comme des Garçons suit, just painting and spilling paint all over it. That was pretty radical and made people crazy at the time.”
5. “I’m so ridiculously dressed for a hotel lobby, but perfectly dressed for the stage! I never realize how ridiculous I can sometimes look until the door of the elevator opens and I can see them looking at each other and rolling their eyes.”
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Photography © Ed Lederman/PEN American Cente